From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 30265 invoked by uid 1002); 28 Aug 2003 11:31:00 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gentoo-dev-help@gentoo.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org Received: (qmail 22873 invoked from network); 28 Aug 2003 11:30:55 -0000 From: Stuart Herbert To: Sven Vermeulen Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 12:28:34 +0100 User-Agent: KMail/1.5.3 References: <1062016412.3111.3.camel@biproc> <200308280244.15864.stuart@gentoo.org> <20030828085937.GA1276@gentoo.org> In-Reply-To: <20030828085937.GA1276@gentoo.org> Cc: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; micalg=pgp-sha1; boundary="Boundary-02=_mdeT/cxbESAIH9Y"; charset="iso-8859-15" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <200308281228.38093.stuart@gentoo.org> Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] European Patentability rules X-Archives-Salt: 47da583b-9733-46ec-a098-8c33cf8bbb94 X-Archives-Hash: 3a0c4611907cfb1a40b1b4fa2a3b71f8 --Boundary-02=_mdeT/cxbESAIH9Y Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-15" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Description: signed data Content-Disposition: inline On Thursday 28 August 2003 9:59 am, Sven Vermeulen wrote: > You have IP in the form of copyright and licensing.=20 Licensing is a subset of contract law, involving the lending of rights or=20 assets from one business party to another. IANAL, but as I understand it,= =20 licenses don't provide legal recognition of IPR. > If they happen to find a similar algorithm doing the same thing due to=20 > their own research, they should be able to use it anyway. And this is the crux of the real problems (imho) with software patents. =20 Because software is typically made up of hundreds (if not thousands) of=20 processes at a time, it seems impossible for programmers to avoid=20 independently inventing the same processes time and time again. This alone would seem to fall foul of the UK requirement that: "To be patentable your invention must ... involve an inventive step. An invention involves an inventive step if, when compared to what is already known, it would not be obvious to someone with a good knowledge and experience of the subject." > IP protection is to _protect_ the _investements_ you've made so that other > companies/people don't use your _inventions_ without having to go through > the same timeline (idea, research, development, simulation, testing, > production). IP protection is to create a legal recognition of your IP. It creates an=20 asset, and a "territorial right" (quoting from the UK Patent Office) to leg= al=20 protection of that asset. > With normal patents, this IP protection is settled. However, software > patents are much worse; they allow anyone to protect an idea, a > general/generic look and feel of any algorithm. You prohibit others to ev= en > think about implementing something like your invention, even though they > will have to go through the same cycle (irdstp). This is not IP protectio= n, > this is creating a monopoly. Now we're back to the evils of the *system*. I don't support the current=20 system, and have already said that. Let's move on. IP protection *does* allow you to create a monopoly of sorts by its very=20 nature. That seems unavoidable, unless you wish to do away with IP=20 protection. > No, since remote access is a concept. Their implementation can and should > be protected (dunno how it's called with HP), but they shouldn't stop > others to develope a remote access implementation different of their own. I agree that any protected IPR should be specific in nature. > If I would have invented a way to predict register values before an > algorithm has completed, I can implement this in a compiler to produce > faster code. To protect my IP, I should protect my implementation. Howeve= r, > if I patented the concept of value-prediction, I make sure that no-one can > ever develop something similar (or even better). Similar, yes. Better - no. The vast majority of UK patents (and, I would= =20 wager, this is true for other systems too) are for incremental improvements= =20 to existing inventions. > This is completely against the spirit of patents. Patents should promote > research and development by giving the inventor a means to protect its > investements. You've confused me. How is this statement in conflict with the idea of you= =20 protecting a concept of value-prediction? > Even more, if _you_ develop software, do you check all existing patents to > be sure that your software doesn't cross one of them? I'm sure that you > don't. You're right, I don't. But there again, I live in a country where most=20 programmers believe that software patents aren't part of our legal system. > John Gage, the Chief Researcher and Director of the Science Office of Sun > Microsystems, had a nice talk on the ONEday conference in Genval, Belgium > on the 30th of July in which he described his PoV on software patents. One > of they key items in his speach was that most _real_ software inventions > (protocols, internet, ...) were inventions of students or people that have > just graduated, people that don't think about patents. These inventions > have changed the ICT-world (TCP/IP, WWW, ...). I always thought TCP/IP was invented for the US DoD? Vint Cerf does seem t= o=20 be talking about the ARPA network in his 1973 paper where TCP is first=20 mentioned. I don't know what the situation was back then, or what it is now, but I do= =20 know that, in the 80's and early 90's, if NASA sold a piece of software, th= ey=20 weren't allowed to license it - you bought the whole thing, (non-exclusive)= =20 rights and all. That's how NQS became the de-facto standard for UNIX batch= =20 processing. NQS was written for NASA, who then sold implementations of=20 Cosmic NQS to companies such as Cray, Sterling Software (both of whom=20 released their own commercial versions) and Monsanto (who released the whol= e=20 thing under the GPL). When I succeeded Monsanto's John Roman as maintainer= =20 of the GPL'd NQS, I was led to understand that this ceeding of rights wasn'= t=20 unique to NASA's charter, but more widely applied to work done by the US=20 Government. If true, wouldn't that mean that TCP/IP was never going to be= =20 patentable in the first place? > Patents are for real, physic inventions,=20 Sorry, but that's not true, at least not here in the UK. The oldest surviv= ing=20 patent issued in the UK was in 1449, for a process of manufacturing stained= =20 glass windows for Eton College. Today, the UK Patent office very clearly=20 states: "Patents are generally intended to cover products or processes that possess or contain new functional aspects; patents are therefore concerned with, for example, how things work, what they do, how they do it, what they are made of or how they are made." Like copyrights, a patent is a business asset that can be licensed if=20 required. No asset - no license. Best regards, Stu =2D-=20 Stuart Herbert stuart@gentoo.o= rg Gentoo Developer http://www.gentoo.or= g/ Beta packages for download http://dev.gentoo.org/~stuart/package= s/ Come and meet me in March 2004 http://www.phparch.com/cruis= e/ GnuGP key id# F9AFC57C available from http://pgp.mit.edu Key fingerprint =3D 31FB 50D4 1F88 E227 F319 C549 0C2F 80BA F9AF C57C =2D- --Boundary-02=_mdeT/cxbESAIH9Y Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Description: signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQA/TedmDC+AuvmvxXwRAiAlAJ4mK4NaglTfQMPnrQxTW2U3bC8K2wCgopnm t5vxIIsCygPYpkxWqRrT4+Q= =6QRJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --Boundary-02=_mdeT/cxbESAIH9Y--